Samsung Says No Android 4.0 Update for Galaxy S

Taken together, the international Samsung Galaxy S and the US variants became the best-selling Android handsets of 2010. Millions of the devices were sold, but now Samsung is leaving a lump of coal in many a stocking this holiday season with the announcement that there will be no update to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for the Galaxy S phones.

Samsung’s proprietary interface layer, called TouchWiz. The Galaxy S devices simply lack the storage and RAM to run the software the way Samsung wants to implement it. This is especially irksome because the Nexus S, which has almost identical hardware, is happily running stock Android 4.0 right now.

Once again a manufacturer’s insistence on an unnecessary differentiating software build has hurt the users. This time it’s not just delayed updates, as in the case of the 2.2 version of Android, but the devices are just being cut off entirely. Any Galaxy S users out there feeling let down?

Right. Still some downsides to that. I upgraded my 3GS to iOS 5 and it significantly bogged down the device and began to lag in everything from apps to just hitting the home button or flipping pages. Lucky for me my contract was up with AT&T (good riddance) in November so I went to Verizon and got the 4S.

It's nice to receive constant updates but it's almost like they purposely slowed down older devices to try and get you to buy a new one. There's no way they didn't notice the performance difference during testing.

Tapping out this comment on my new Sammy Galaxy Tab 4g LTE that I just found under my xmas tree! Went onto the interwebs to learn more about it, and google news links pointed out just this morning that my shiny new tablet also won't be getting the OS upgrade. Wondering about options...

I understand, they want to keep the touchwiz home launcher experience and it just wont do with this hardware. they don't want to change the user experience drastically. Not everyone is a computer nerd and when grandma tries to use her phone that she just got used to with touchwiz and its completely changed to vanilla ics, it may be too much for some people. they will be lost. wont know where to go for contacts and such and the touchwiz user experience.

So cutting off Android updates is a preferable option to learning a new interface, no matter how much better the OS? Samsung is doing this with millions of their phones. How many of those are used by the proverbial "grandma" who predictably gets trotted out as a foil to any suggestion of change or advancement in tech?

Bah and humbug. It ain't about grandma, it's all about imposing the need to buy a new phone prematurely.